New Delhi: In what appeared to be a movement forward on the controversial women's reservation Bill, a near consensus was arrived at on proposals for double-member constituencies and increasing the number of seats at a meeting of four major political parties convened by the Lok Sabha Speaker Manohar Joshi.

"There has been near consensus on increasing the number of seats," Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader V K Malhotra told reporters after the 90-minute meeting while the Speaker said that the proposal of double-member constituencies was among those on which there was agreement.

The Lok Sabha Speaker had convened the meeting to break the impasse over the bill ahead of the monsoon session of Parliament after an all-party meeting convened by him in June ended in a deadlock.

Speaker said that a draft would be prepared on the agreed proposals and would be sent to the Prime Minister for consideration.

Asked about the outcome, he said everyone was unanimous that women should be given reservation and that it should be achieved through consensus.

Malhotra said that the BJP national executive would be meeting at Raipur later this week during which discussions would be held on the agreed proposals so that the government could bring forward the Bill in the monsoon session itself.

Besides Malhotra, the leaders who attended the meeting included Shivraj Patil (Congress), Somnath Chatterjee (Communist Party of India-Marxist) and Mulayam Singh Yadav (Samajvadi Party), who is a strong opponent of the Bill in its current form.

PTI